


I'm Going Nowhere, Getting There Too

by aewriting



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Child Neglect, Drug Use, F/M, Michael Guerin Week 2019, Unhealthy Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-24 06:06:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20701163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aewriting/pseuds/aewriting
Summary: Michael hits bottom after a particularly unsettling one-night stand.***Day 3 of Michael Guerin Week: Dates just limit your options





	I'm Going Nowhere, Getting There Too

**Author's Note:**

> Please be aware, this fic contains a description of present-day child neglect, drug use, and references to Michael's abusive upbringing.

After Max, Michael spiraled.

He knew he did. Even as it was happening, he knew it. Rather than fighting it, though, he let it happen. Leaned into it, even. He was the guy you’d go to for an old-fashioned barroom brawl. A dirty, no-strings fuck.

It wasn’t Maria that got him to change. That lasted only a few weeks before blowing up spectacularly.

It wasn’t Isobel.

Hell, it wasn’t even Alex.

It was Jake.

Now, he never actually saw Jake’s face. Couldn’t have picked him out of a line up.

And he couldn't remember the woman’s name. Her, though, he might have been able to pick out. He’d picked her up once, hadn’t he?

Saturn’s Rings was packed that night – he’d been blacklisted from the Pony, told to do his drinking elsewhere. And his cruising.

She’d been tipsy but not messy drunk – she’d been into him, and Michael didn’t think they’d fucked before (increasingly rare, in this town).

She’d arrived with her girlfriends. She left with Michael.

He should have known how fucked it would be when she directed him to the old housing plan he’d grown up in with Hank.

He should have known even earlier than that, though, really. She’d been so restless, so fidgety. Eyes too bright in a too-gaunt face.

He fucked her. Hard, but not as hard as she wanted, right on the floor of her shitty little apartment, just feet from the front door. It was only after he came that he started looking around.

Almost no furniture. A textbook open on a little card table in the corner. Too-small sneakers by the entrance.

There was a knock, then, coming from behind a closed door. “Mom?” A pause. “Mom? Are you okay?”

“Go back to bed! Jesus, everything’s _fine_,” she yelled back. She turned her attention to Michael. “That’s just Jake. Ignore him. Door’s locked.”

Michael was frozen, eyes going to the door. Jake.

He’d been a Jake.

He tracked the woman as she walked to her messy kitchenette and pulled out a small bag. “Want some?”

Michael shook his head wordlessly. The woman shrugged, then snorted.

Michael looked away, then, suddenly aware that he was naked but for a condom. “How, how old’s your kid?” His voice sounded foreign to him.

She wiped at her nose. “Ten. Seriously, just ignore him.”

Ten. Michael’d been an ignored ten-year-old, once, trapped in a meth house. Ten was old enough to know what was going on, know that shit was fucked.

The woman was smiling at him, and with the sex haze gone and the light from the kitchen, Michael could see the needle marks on her arm, see her teeth. “Want another round, Cowboy?”

“No,” Michael said quickly. “I, I gotta…”

She was still naked. “Kid killed it, huh?”

Michael shook his head; didn’t say anything.

“You can have my ass,” she offered. “I don’t care.”

“No, um… no thank you,” Michael said, oddly polite, moving too slowly, feeling dumb. He looked at Jake’s bedroom door, reached out with his mind and unlocked it. “You shouldn’t lock him in,” he said, voice quivering. “You _shouldn’t_.”

She glared at him. “The fuck? Don’t tell me how to raise my own kid.”

Michael just nodded and tried to dress as quickly as possible.

“You were a good fuck, Cowboy,” she called, too loud, after him as he left. He grimaced, sure the kid could hear everything.

He felt like a shitbag. He sat in his truck and he swigged his acetone and he cried. Cried for himself. Cried for the kid. Hell, he even cried a little for Maria. And Alex. For Isobel, too. For Max. For his mom.

It was morning when he saw a kid in a Raiders hat exit the apartment and lock the door carefully behind him. Michael felt like a creeper but watched anyway as the kid boarded a school bus. He called in to Sanders, took the morning off. Watched as the mom left a few hours later in her diner uniform.

Other people, people with more faith in humanity, might have called the cops. Child and Youth Services. But Michael, well, he was a little biased.

He drove to Wal-Mart, bought bottled water and a bunch of those cheap little cracker packets with peanut butter and cheese. He remembered being ten, when those were sometimes the only shit he’d eat for days on end.

He drove back to the apartment, figured the kid would get home from school before his mom came back. Michael put the water and the crackers on the front stoop and grabbed all the cash he had left in the glove box. Stuffed it under the door. “For Jake,” he scrawled on the back of an old receipt, and he stuffed that under the door, too.

It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

For the next few months, he went back every couple of weeks, always on a weekday, always during school hours, always when the mom was at work.

Until one day when he peered in the window, there was no furniture and a shiny new lock was on the door.

_That_ day, though, that first day, he sat in his truck, pulled out his phone, and dialed a familiar number.

“Isobel,” he whispered. “Please. I… I need help.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Fic title is from "Sink to the Bottom," by Fountains of Wayne.


End file.
